


Congratulations! It's a Viking!

by rroseselavy



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Human AU, M/M, Slow Burn, Sperm Donation, sort of, sperm bank, you'll see - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-08-14 19:06:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8025496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rroseselavy/pseuds/rroseselavy
Summary: Fact: The world’s largest sperm bank, Cryos, is based in Denmark and exports internationally. The more you know.





	1. Chapter 1

He was led into a sterile room by a woman in scrubs.

“You have everything you could possibly need to complete your task. Please use this bottle; it’s really not rocket science. And clean up after yourself. Other people will be using this office after you.”

The teenager, visibly uncomfortable and clearly younger than what his fake ID listed him as, sat down as the nurse closed the door behind her and left him to get to work. The room itself was completely and utterly void of any kind of erotic charge, but it was something that they tried to rectify with a “gift basket” of sorts on one of the counters. Lotion. Magazines. A TV with videotapes. He looked at the titles of the videotapes and winced, looking back at the magazines and spreading one open. He flipped the cap off of the bottle and unzipped his pants. _The things you do for coffee money…_

TEN YEARS LATER

Matthias Kohler lived an incredibly normal life of the nine-to-five grind in his cubicle and had absolutely no desire to achieve more than that. Anyone could tell you that when he said that he was lying through his teeth, but he wasn’t ready to have that kind of real conversation with people at Christmas parties quite yet.

Most of his day was punctuated by attempting to fold paper airplanes, general nonsense at the water coolers (never started by him, but definitely intensified by him), and trying to figure out if the clock was slow or if time really did slow down when he was sitting at a swivel chair and was contractually obligated to not spin around dramatically in it. He did not bother his cubicle mates as much as he bothered himself.

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays he would go directly home, eat something out of his fridge, and watch football on the couch until he fell asleep. Tuesdays and Thursdays and Saturdays he would go to the gym after work and swim, row, or punch a sandbag into oblivion until he felt like his arms were going to fall off. Sundays he would sleep off the hangover of Saturday night.

From what the media would tell you, it was the bachelor’s dream. He kind of hated it.

It was ten days after his twenty-sixth birthday that someone knocked on his door. Given that it wasn’t takeaway and it certainly wasn’t Abel, who would either be too high or working at this hour, Matthias pulled on a pair of jeans and answered it with a bright “Godaften!”

The man in front of him was less chipper; clearly uninterested in whether or not Matthias was pleased or displeased with his arrival, he asked if he could come in. There was something about a previous medical endeavor that they had to talk about; he was a representative from a clinic that Matthias had used frequently ten years prior.

“May I sit? I suggest you sit as well. We have a few things to discuss.”

Matthias could start to feel his blood pressure rise. What was all of this about? Was this about the time he accidentally broke someone’ leg? Were they coming to sue?

“So I represent Cryos International, Mr. Kohler. Ten years ago, you donated sperm at a very high rate under an Anonymity clause, specifying that you wanted to be listed as…Pilsner instead of by your true identity.”

The Dane’s heart dropped into his stomach. Where the hell was this going? Was this about the fake ID he used to do it? He was just a kid and he needed money—

“We tried to contact you later on, but you’d moved and it was impossible to get a hold of you. We only just got this address, which is why I’m here now. Anyhow, I digress,” he smoothed over, unctuous voice making Matthias more uncomfortable than the subject matter.

“Each donation given is not necessarily only one usage; depending on volume of the donation, the material can be redivided into separate test tubes. Your sperm was also shipped internationally, as our bank is one of the few in the world that performs such a service for those who need a donor. In Denmark, as we are a smaller country with a limited gene pool, we have a limit of twelve successful usages per donor within the country borders as to keep from spiking the gene pool with too much of one person’s DNA.”

Matthias _definitely_ did not like where this was going.

“You were in very high demand, Mr. Kohler. Your sperm is very high quality and had a _very high_ success rate. You hit the request limit very quickly on a national scale, so we had to begin exporting to meet demands—“

“What are you saying?”

“I’m here because I want to tell you that in the past ten years and after so many donations, you are a father of 109 children.”

“That’s…that’s impossible.”

“Actually, it’s quite possible,” said the official, pulling out a fat manila envelope. “You are nearly two meters tall, blond, no serious health issues, and have blue eyes. Most people who use sperm donors are looking into two of those traits at the very least. You were a dream come true; these women almost all seem to have gotten their perfect child—“

“Wait, so why are you here? If I signed the Anonymity clause, my rights are protected. I have no obligation to pay any sort of—“

“This is not about money, Mr. Kohler.”

He had to keep himself from sighing loudly in relief.

“This visit also is, however, about the aforementioned anonymity clause you signed. The anonymity clause means that the child resulting from the donation would not be able to make contact with the donor; it is simply a transaction of genetic material.”

“Yeah, I knew that when I signed it.”

“However, we tend to have a revisitation option for those donors who have more than one hundred children where if they wanted to reveal their true identities, they would be allowed to. Moreso for the legal process; we can’t be bothered with one hundred petitions for a father who doesn’t want to be—“

“Is there any way I can actually decide without…I don’t know. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure they’re all great kids. But I’m…I’m not even thirty yet. Is there any way I could make contact with them without the “I’m your dad” conversation?”

The official glanced off to the side, taking a deep breath.

“It’s not necessarily official protocol, but…the Anonymity clause is not a two-way street.”

“What do you mean?”

“The mothers only know you as Pilsner, but you can know the registered children in our database and where they live.”

“Do you…how do I see?”

“I have it printed off in this envelope; I did it in case of you asking that exact question. We have the database in case of emergencies or donor-related issues, like if two children from the same sperm donor were to start a relationship. But it can also be used for this purpose.”

The envelope thwacked onto Matthias’s coffee table.

“There are basic profiles and addresses for each of your children, almost all of whom are not currently living in Denmark. Twelve of them are, though, as I said earlier. I’ve listed them by alphabetical order. But…you need to know something.”

“What?” _Of course there was some sort of catch to this._

“If you reveal your identity to one of these children…you have to reveal your identity to all of them. The anonymity clause will be revoked, and when these children come of age they will have the option to ask for your identity and come find you. You cannot play favorites or pick and choose amongst them. If you don’t, it’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.”

That seemed reasonable enough.

“Hang on…you said that only twelve children can come from one person in the context of sperm banks, right?”

“Yes.”

“Does that mean that…that I’m not allowed to have children? Since I’ve already…contributed to the gene pool to that level?”

The official chuckled.

“It shouldn’t be a problem. I don’t imagine you’re having twelve more children with your girlfriend?”

The Dane felt his cheeks begin to warm up indignantly.

“I don’t have a girlfriend, it’s…just to know.”

The official nodded, face utterly stonelike.

“I’ll leave you to it; I’m coming back in about a month to see if you’ve changed your mind about it all, yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

Matthias escorted the official out of his apartment before slumping down on the ground, spreading his legs to let his head touch the floor in a position that would make a gymnast jealous.

“What the fuck. What the FUCK. What the _fuuuuuuuck…”_

This tasteful chorus continued for about three minutes before he decided that he had to call his friend. When he called four times and didn’t receive an answer, he decided to text:

                        ~~Whatsapp, 19:47

 **You:** Abe we have a situation

 **Necronomibong:**?

 **You:** I need! You to come over

 **Necronomibong:** Just a second I’m busy

 **You:** I need you to come sober tho

 **Necronomibong:** Fuck ok well I have to wait like two hours then

 **You:**!!!!!!!!!! boi

It was dark out when Abel finally showed up at Matthias’s apartment. He’d had enough sense to bring food, knowing that if Matthias had wanted him to come sober, it meant something _incredibly_ shitty had happened. Matthias was standing in the kitchen with the fattest envelope Abel had ever seen.

 “What’s in the envelope?”

“Sit down,” he said, handing the Dutchman a mug of coffee.

Abel was already guessing to himself as he moved to sit in one of Matthias’s acceptably wobbly kitchen chairs. He took a gulp of the lukewarm coffee and continued ticking off ideas in his head faster than he could generate them. Was it money-related? Fake passports? A solid brick of cocaine, which Matthias wanted to sell and split the profits? He always _knew_ that Matthias was doing more than that office job, how else would he afford this apartment? Where did he get the cocaine? Who was he working for—

“I have 109 children.”

Abel spat out his drink.

“Matthias, you know I’m not good with sarcasm—“

“No, Abe, really. I donated sperm awhile back and they just came and gave me all the fucking information about the kids.”

“Did you only give me this coffee just because you thought I’d spray it everywhere and you wanted to laugh at me?”

 “…yes.”

Abel exhaled through his nose before finishing his coffee in one go.

“So…109 childrens. Eight more than the Dalmatians.”

“Childrens.”

 “Fuck you, Danish is not my mother tongue.”

“But what do I do? They want to know if I want to remain anonymous so I said that I was going to like…kind of snoop around before I made my decision. But I’m not allowed to tell any of the kids that I’m their dad—“

“Wait, _what?”_

 “If I tell one, I have to tell all of them. It’s a part of the Anonymity clause. If I tell one then others might want to know, and it would be a huge liability issue.”

 “I mean…wait, when did you—“

“I started when I was sixteen, I had a fake ID. It started out being for pocket money but then I kind of…kept going, because it paid pretty well and I wanted to live by myself and help pay the bills at my dad’s house when I got older….”

“Fuck, Matthias, why didn’t you just rely on your student income like normal people?”

 “Because I usually had to give it to my dad so we could afford to live where we did, and plus, like…what sixteen year old boy wouldn’t want to get paid to masturbate?”

“Fair.”

“So here’s my question for you, given that you are not like me and don’t fuck up giant decisions like this: what do I do knowing that there are 109 small children in this here envelope, and the possibility that they have my eyes?”

“How do you know they’re small?”

“I just turned twenty-six. They’re all either at or under the age of ten.”          

 “Christ. You want to know if you should go find 109 ten year olds for no reason other than…because you can?”

“I mean…when you put it that way it sounds more malicious.”

 “And you’re not allowed to physically contact them and tell them you’re their biological father.”

“Yep.”

“I’d say go for it. So long as you’re subtle, it might be really interesting. Then again, you’re not exactly subtle.”

Matthias’s eyes seemed to bore into the envelope. It had yet to even be opened.

"Before you do that, though, eat something.”

  Matthias grabbed at the food while unpinning the brad of the envelope, his short fingernails briefly failing to find purchase against the metal before the pin started to fold upwards.

            “Let’s do this.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello. It's me. 
> 
> Sorry for the hiatus! I will be updating this regularly now. 
> 
> Comment, send me questions on tumblr (it's in my bio) and thanks for reading!

**“** What if you just meet them on the street one day and you don’t even know?”

“Abel.”

“Yeah?”

“You see these scars on the sides of my hands? The little ones, right under my pinkies?”

“Yes.”

 **“** I was born with six fingers on both hands. I’m pretty sure it’s a dominant trait; that means that if I see a kid with big blue eyes and a beautiful smile, I can look at their hands and know.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

He flipped through each case file: they’d been kind enough to organize by country. He put aside all the ones that weren’t from Denmark. Sorry, ninety-something kids he had in other countries: Dad’s too broke to go find you.

“You going by alphabetical order?”

“Nah, I’m gonna go in reverse.”

“Any reason?”

“I’m a K-name, man. I can relate to those kids who are always last. It sucks.”

“K’s in the middle, though. It’s the eleventh letter of the alphabet—“

“Shut _up_.”

The first file was where the mother was filed under the V name of “Väinämöinen”. The conception date was listed as recent, this year even. Recent enough that the name, age and sex slots simply had “?????” listed instead of any information.

“Interesting.”

How many other people were pregnant with his child at this moment? He had no real desire to have kids of his own at this point (for the kids’ sake more than his own), but it filled him with a…well, he didn’t know quite what.

“Will I keep finding these people when I’m old? Will I have a kid and…and my kid might have a biological sibling in their grade?”

“Only one way to find out, Mattie.”

~~

Matthias was in the shower after getting out of the pool when he heard someone unfamiliar call his name in a Finnish accent. He turned around, toweling his hair before bending over to rub down his legs.

“Can I help you?”

“Yeah, you can. You know Natalya, the instructor for the kickboxing class?”

“…yes.”

So _that_ was how the Finn knew his name.

“She’s got some issues with an ex-boyfriend. He’s keeping a bunch of her stuff. Me and Berwald are going to go to his place and…do some convincing.”

“You’re maybe 166 cm tall.”

“170, thanks. But _you_ —“

The Finn jabbed him in the stomach.

“—are not. And neither is Berwald. Do you have any other tall friends?”

Matthias’s mind immediately jumped to Abel. Abel was most likely at work by now, though.

“Nah.”

“Okay. So are you in?”

Matthias had nothing to do all day. He thanked God for Saturdays off before telling the Finn that yes, he was in.

“And what’s your name?”

“Tino.”

“Thanks. I like to know the names of whoever I get into unmarked cars with.”

Tino laughed while pushing the locker room door open.

“Is Berwald that guy I keep seeing in the weight room? The one that looks like he could bench-press me?”

“Yeah. He’s alright,” Tino admitted before they reached the parking lot. “A little quiet.”

Matthias and Tino sat in front of a small car that seemed barely large enough to fit Tino, let alone two two-meter-tall monstrosities of men.

“So what exactly is the plan?”

“We’re going to his house to _politely_ ask for her stuff back.”

Berwald finally could be viewed from the glass doors of the gym and pushed his way out. Tino trotted a few steps forward, enough for Matthias to read whatever was written on the back of his old leather jacket in magenta block letters: KAUNIS POIKA.

Matthias’s Finnish was nonexistent. He’d have to ask later.

“Did you check in with Natalya?”

“Yeah. She’s fine, y’know. ‘S not like it’s th’end of the world if she doesn’t get back her things.”

“I _know_ , Berwald, but it’s one thing to be going through a break-up. It’s another _entirely_ if your ex wants to be an ass about it. Does she know we’re going to talk to him?”

“ _Nej._ ”

Was Matthias the only one here who’d been born in Denmark and had never lived elsewhere? Berwald’s accent was definitely Swedish. _Everything_ about him said repressed Stockholm businessman, down to the misshapen haircut and the poorly sized glasses.

“Who’s this?”

“ _This_ ,” started Tino, beaming, “is Matthias. We know I’m scary when I want to be, but I figure it never hurts to have two tall people flanking you.”

Berwald’s lips turned up slightly. Tino’s cheeks were flushing and Matthias began to wonder if there was something more behind this “outing” than getting someone’s things back.

“So do we just show up? What are we doing?”

“Let’s go to the apartment; I copped the address when she emailed me a few weeks back.”

Matthias was shocked to find that he fit quite easily within the vehicle, albeit with his knees pressed into the passenger seat. Unfortunately it looked like Berwald wasn’t about to scoot his chair up. Tino turned around to back out of his parking space, eyebrows knitted together over a serious expression that was a complete reversal of the smiling, bubbly face he’d had not two minutes prior.

“Something up, Tino?”

“This is my driving face.”

“No s’not,” said Berwald, chin resting in the palm of his huge hand. “You scared?”

“Scared for her more than for me,” Tino admitted.

“Natalya can kick anybody’s ass,” asserted Berwald. “’m not worried about her at all.”

Matthias was watching the traffic go by, shocked at how casually, _artfully_ Tino dodged some fool of a pedestrian who thought he could get away with jaywalking. He heard Tino mutter “ _Tämä on minun tie_ , _molopää,_ ” before turning back up to look at Berwald.

“All I know is that he’s physically keeping a lot of her books. And if he’s doing that, then that means he’s capable of keeping Nati away from something, something I believed incapable of being achieved by humans.” Tino slowed down in front of one of the many apartment complexes.

“Is this it?”

“The number matches.”

Tino parked, took a deep breath, and opened his door. Matthias had seen him move around before and he’d lost that fluidity he’d had a few months ago in favor of a sort of metered, slow gracefulness that made Matthias feel gangly and uncoordinated.

It’s because he’s short, Matthias decided, finally being let out from the back and stretching his shoulders.

“Tino, y’doing anything later?”

“Nope. It’s number 85.”

“Right.”

“Wait, there’s the railing right there. When I knock, I’m gonna jump up on it and squat.”

“Tino, is that…”

“It’ll work, trust me.”

_Knock knock._

Another six-foot specimen of a blond man opened the door. Tino was perched on the railing and both Matthias and Berwald were standing at his sides, arms crossed. The ex-boyfriend did not look like an absolute bastard. Matthias didn’t know if this was supposed to make him relieved for Natalya or more concerned for her safety.

“We’re here for Natalya’s books.”

Ex-boyfriend’s face lit up with recognition.

“Yeah, totally, they’re inside,” he said in really horrible Danish.

“Do you prefer English?”

The American stalled.

“…yes.”

“Can we come in?”

“Also yes.”

Berwald and Tino walked into the apartment and Matthias lingered.

“Are you American?”

“Yeah. Here for a year for work. Met nice girl, started dating, she moved in, she figured out two and a half months later that she was a lesbian. It happens.”

Matthias snorted.

“What were the books?”

“They were hers about the Danish economic system; I needed them for a report I was writing and she wanted them before I was finished citing them. I don’t need them anymore. It’s fine. Uh, please tell her to text me back.”

Matthias nodded before going in to find his…were they friends? Co-conspirators? He didn’t know quite yet.

Berwald and Tino were hauling a milk crate of books out of what Matthias assumed was the American’s bedroom.

“Hey, thanks man,” said Matthias, casually grabbing him by the shoulder.

The American shrugged, adjusting his glasses tiredly.

“Uh—“

“Matthias, we’re leaving.”

“Oh. Well, uh…bye?”

“Bye.”

The door closed.

“D’you want to get coffee?”

“Is there a place around here where I don’t have to spend sixty kroner for it?” Matthias would have to ask Natalya how she could afford to live in this part of Copenhagen with just her salary from teaching kickboxing.

“Yeah, I know a guy around here. ‘s not exactly cheap, mind, but it’s not as crazy as some other shops.”

“Lead the way, Berwald.”

Matthias was walking next to the Swede and pretending to not be sizing him up. He made an excellent contrast to the blunt softness that weighed on Tino’s chubby face and peach-fuzzy chin; Berwald’s nose was an arrowhead, skin slightly pocked from what Matthias assumed had been an adolescence full of acne, and his mouth was a strong set line across his long face. _Imposing_ , Matthias thought as Berwald pushed the shop door open.

Tino flipped his wallet open and Matthias saw the surname on the license: VÄINÄMÖINEN.

No fucking way. Tino’s sister—

“Decaf, please.”

Berwald’s head jerked back slightly before he and Matthias placed their orders. Tino went to sit down at a table in the back and the two other men went to join him.

“Tino, when d’you ever get decaf?”

“Well, uh…” Tino drummed his fingers on the tabletop before looking around the shop furtively. “I’m, well…”

“Are you trying t’quit caffeine?”

“Nah, Ber, I’m pregnant.”

Matthias choked slightly on his coffee.

“Are y’joking?”

“No, I’m…I wasn’t assigned male at birth. I’m transgender. I’m transgender and I went off hormones for a bit so I could have a kid. That’s, uh, why my face has gotten kinda roundish lately. All my fat’s redistributing again.”

“Who’s the other—“

“Sperm donor. But yeah, I’m probably going to be taking it a bit easy from now on.”

Tino leaned forward with an acerbic glint in his eye, looking intently at the inscrutable expression on Berwald’s face. Matthias was still in shock.

“You still want to do something after this?”

Berwald did not hesitate.

“Of course.”

~~

Matthias walked home from the coffee shop and realized maybe two thirds of the way home that he needed to buy groceries. There was a wedge of bleu cheese and three packets of mustard in his fridge; while both were good, he knew neither could be combined with something to make a valid meal.

The big stores were closed; his only hope was this tiny corner-shop that he had to pray had milk or eggs or rice or something that could be cooked and didn’t come in a box.

Tino was pregnant with his child. And Matthias was bound to secrecy about it or else 108 other people would be entitled to know that too. His mother’s voice rang in his head: never ask a question you’re not ready to know the answer to.

 _The kid’s not really_ yours, _it’s just got your biological components in it,_ Matthias reasoned as he scratched his nose and went by one shelf perhaps a little too quickly.

He knocked one, exactly _one_ jar of pickles off the shelf and it immediately exploded on the ground. Whoever was manning the register hopped over the counter and came running.

“Shit, shit, I’m sorry—“ Matthias was picking up shards of glass and putting them away from the pickles as if that somehow changed the amount of mess. He’d finished doing that when he’d finally looked up to make eye contact with the shopkeeper.

The shopkeeper was not who he expected. Much, _much_ younger, for starters. He knelt down with a hand-broom and a dustpan and Matthias could make out that not only were his ears over-pierced, but he was trying to hide that half his head was shaved. As he often did with things he’d never had, he wanted to reach out and touch the bar running through the shopkeep’s ear.

“Do you want me to pay for this?”

The shopkeeper shrugged, a hand going up to twist an earring absentmindedly. He had chipped black nail polish on.

“It’s fifteen kroner and no one buys them anyway. I really don’t care. I’ll ring you up and when the old man gets back I’ll just say that I did. It’s fine.”

The voice didn’t sound right out of him. It was deep, calm… _dreamlike._ Matthias snapped out of it as he got up.

“Buy _something_ , though.”

“Yeah, of course.”

When he finally did get what he’d come for and he’d come to the register, he looked for a nametag or something. Ah, there it was, embroidered on his red smock: _Lukas._

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

~~Whatsapp, 23:09

 **You:** hey man what are you doing right now?

 **Necronomibong:** not much. Why, did you find that person with your unborn child?

 **You:** yeah actually wtf how did you know

 **Necronomibong:** I know things. is she cute?

 **You:** haha

How, exactly, was he supposed to answer this question of Abel’s? He had no clue if Tino was okay with people telling others that he was trans. Then again…Abel didn’t know Tino personally. Abel hadn’t even seen the case file with Tino’s surname on it. It’d be okay, Matthias reasoned, to say Tino was a guy.

 **You:** nah actually it was a dude. he was trans and wanted a kid of his own I guess?? and he didn’t want to wait for a partner, so he went off his hormones and did it himself. Also if he were a she I wouldn’t find him attractive bc…im gay mate

 **Necronomibong:** wow. good for him. also FUCK you were bi for like 5 years, plus you can find girls cute without wanting to sleep with them. My rabbits are cute but I’m not sticking my cock in them.

 **You:** yet.

 **Necronomibong:** ✓ Seen 23:12

 **You:** Abel please just admit that you’re a furry it will make our relationship that much easier

 **Necronomibong:** When you admit that smørrebrød is inferior to tijgerbol.

 **You:** so when I lie about my heritage and talk about your shit bread like it’s tasty and good for you?

 **Necronomibong:** you could perhaps phrase it differently.

 **You:** nah

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: 
> 
> KAUNIS POIKA: Pretty boy. 
> 
> Tämä on minun tie, molopää: This is my street, dickhead


	3. Chapter 3

Matthias had been trying to quit smoking. Maybe being told you have a hundred-odd children and trying to find a fraction of them would put a damper on any attempt at making your life better or normal.

He sat on a park bench with his long torso curled over a menthol. He hadn’t shaved in two days and you could barely tell that his brick of a chin was pricking raw in the cup of his giant, unused hand.

This was how Lukas had found him the second time, trapped after the few hours of daylight that they were rationed in the colder months vanished with little warning. Streetlamps did not do Matthias any mercy; he looked like a wild beast, with his large head and lumpy overcoat. Lukas stood with his hands in his pockets and no regard for how cold he was, only regard for how good he looked with his jacket open.

“Got a light?” Matthias asked, not seeing Lukas’s face in the darkness.

 _“Unnskyld meg?_ ”

“Got. A. Light?” The passerby shook his head.

“Slower.”

“Fik en-- _Har du et lys?_ ”

Lukas pulled a cheap plastic lighter out of his jacket, too artfully distressed for the studs and patches to have been done on his own.

“ _God,_ your Norwegian is awful.”

“We’re in Denmark, _Rollo_. Here we speak Danish.”

Lukas stepped into the streetlamp’s halo, violet eyes shining under hooded eyelids. Matthias recognized him immediately, silk-white hair falling over his wide forehead and mouth crumpled in a bow under a smooth teardrop of a nose. There was a small scar just under his lip where Matthias had to assume a ring had once been. Matthias suddenly felt large and brutish, jagged and exclamatory eyebrows crushing over his eyes in adamant dejection.

“You don’t ever _speak_ Danish. You can’t grunt and whistle and expect it to be recognized as a language.”

“See, you say that, but you’re the one who moved here from Norway. You are from Norway, right?”

“Do bears shit in the woods?”

Smoke blew out of Matthias’s hard cut of a nose. His voice was deceptively clear for someone who clearly had a smoking habit, cutting through the air more than the cold was cutting through Lukas at that moment:

“You tell me. I, personally, have never seen a tree, and have lived here in the city my entire life. I personally enjoy shoving my cock into subway grates because I want to get closer to modernity.”

Puffs of air escaped Lukas’s pretty mouth when he laughed. The lamplight fell on him easier than sugar dissolved into coffee. Judging from the thickness of his dark boots and the denim vest buttoned under his leather jacket, Matthias figured he shouldn’t mention that he thought Lukas was pretty. Honesty could either be a gift or a curse.

“Did you come back from a concert or are you just dressed like that to make your parents cry?”

“You still need that lighter?”

Matthias gave the lighter back and Lukas tucked it back into his pants pocket. He walked a bit off, shuffling, never picking up his feet (it was the simplest way to announce his presence without exerting too much physical force).

“I dress like this because I like it. My parents are dead.”

~~

                               ~~Whatsapp, 21:23

 **Necronomibong Havemeyer:** Active Now

 **You** : ABEL I FUCKED UP

 **Necronomibong:** Specifically or in generally

 **You** : in generally

 **Necronomibong:** You know what? I’m going to break into your home and replace your phone, your fridge and TV with facsimiles made of glued-together macaroni pieces.

 **You:** i will piss on your kitchen counter

 **Necronomibong:** I will steal your clothes and lock you outside, leaving you to deal with frostbite. When your nipples give up and detach from your body, I will not come to save you.

 **You:** i’m danish. the cold does not fuck me. i will fuck the cold. when you die first i will dance on your grave.

 **Necronomibong:** I want you to lower my casket so that you can let me down one last time.

 **You:** i love you.

 **Necronomibong:** I know. What were we talking about?

 **You:** i fucked up.

 **Necronomibong:** the question was how you fucked up

 **You:** so remember how I told you a few weeks ago about the cute person I saw at that cornerstore?

 **Necronomibong:** The guy with the industrial piercing who pretended to not care when you ruined his whole day by breaking that jar of pickles?

 **You:** um.

 **Necronomibong:** Don’t make retail workers’ lives more difficult than they already are.

 **You:** ok dad. Anyway, I ran into him again and didn’t realize it was him and kind of made fun of his accent? I didn’t realize he was Norwegian before, I guess. But I called him Rollo cuz he was being kind of a dick.

 **Necronomibong:** Please tell me you didn’t do what you always do when a guy with an undercut is trouble.

 **You:** nO because I accidentally reminded him of the fact that he’s an orphan?????

 **Necronomibong:** ……….Explain.

 **You:** So he was dressed all punk rock or whatever and so I asked if he dressed like that to make his parents cry cuz I was teasing but right now I’m realizing that it was really mean regardless BUT THEN HE SAID “my parents are dead” and HOLY SHIT????? WHAT DO YOU DO WHATDO YOU SAY IM

 **Necronomibong:** Was he fucking with you back?

 **You:** I am not ready to make that call bc what if he WAS NOT

 **Necronomibong:** What are your chances of seeing this person again?

 **You:** I mean, one chance encounter after. Maybe there will be others.

 **Necronomibong:** We are not talking about /luck/, we’re talking about statistics.

 **You:** K, fine, put it that way it’s like 5%

 **Necronomibong:** So someone is an orphan or isn’t.

 **You:** Schrodinger’s orphan. GOD if I ever get his number im putting that as his name on my phone

 **Necronomibong:** Do you have any idea how awkward it’s going to be to go through the phone with the cops when you’re inevitably stabbed or run over? Do you want me to look a policeman in the eye and explain why you named me ‘Necronomibong’?

 **You:** worth it. Anyway, that was horrible, do you want to go get drunk?

 **Necronomibong:** I have a case report to file in 12 hours.

 **You:**? what’s your point exactly

 **Necronomibong:** Dammit

~~

This bar in particular had known Matthias since he’d been using a fake ID. They’d known what he’d been going through and had decided against actually calling him on it. Matthias was grateful.

“I’d kill for the ability to erase memories in a really swift and effective fashion.”

Abel’s eyebrow quirked.

“So a concussion?”

“No, no, I mean a normal, organic way of doing so.”

“Still a concussion.”

“Non-violent head injury method.”

“Like the thing in Men in Black? With the light that erases memories?”

“ _Yep_ , that. I’d use it all the time.”

“But would you also use it on yourself or would you only use it on those around you? Do you keep the memories of your mistakes alive while others don’t have the luxury?”

Matthias took a gulp of his beer before processing what exactly his friend had just said.

“Holy shit, _what_?”

“Would you subject yourself to bearing the weight of your own incompetence or would you throw yourself down in there with the others?”

Matthias forgot how serious Abel could get, green eyes glowing accusatorily like shards of sea glass in the dim light of the bar. Matthias never doubted Abel’s fondness for him but often had a hard time figuring out if their feelings matched up; Matthias’s casual attitude and Abel’s severe neutrality often found Matthias wondering if Abel was humoring a relationship with him more than participating in it.

“I’d nuke my own brain too.”

“But if you do that, you’d potentially forget that you had the device to begin with. And you’d forget that you made mistakes and potentially repeat them. So the real question isn’t if the mistakes matter: the question is if you repeating them matters. The question, also, is if your sense of self is worth more than the people who are hurt by it.”

“Abel, I’m not sober enough for this.” Matthias finished his beer and motioned for Abel to follow suit.

“It’s a moot point, since the Men in Black aren’t real.”

Abel, who had watched the X-Files on seven separate occasions and was a top moderator on alien-ufos.com, was not convinced.

“So they say.”

“Abel—“

Matthias’s train of thought was immediately interrupted by a commotion at the other end of the bar: a larger man shouting down a smaller one that Matthias couldn’t make out. Matthias started to get up and Abel grabbed him by his coat collar.

“If you break another bottle, you won’t be allowed back here.”

“Who said I was gonna break a bottle?”

Abel let go but still followed closely behind Matthias to the point of coming close to stepping on the heels of the Dane’s boots. Matthias grabbed the back of the larger man’s shirt, towering impressively over him even if he didn’t physically show the same musculature. Matthias knew he didn’t need bulging muscles. Sometimes a smile could be more frightening than any weapon.

“Lay off, Nikos.”

Nikos promptly layed off, leaving Matthias and Abel to check on the person Nikos had been harassing.

Matthias had managed to get him out of the bar when he’d realized that statistics were out the window and the man he had halfway slung over his shoulders was Lukas.

Abel seemed to have already realized this, as he had returned to nurse their beers.

“The hell happened?” Matthias asked, dabbing at Lukas’s bloody nose with the end of his scarf, completely ignoring Lukas trying to swat his hand away.

“Guy asked if the jeans I wore came in men’s and I said yes, do you come in men too?”

Matthias snorted.

“That’s hilarious. In all seriousness, straight men are devils.”

Lukas nodded before leaning against the wall, tilting his head back to stop his nose from bleeding.

“I hear that in some countries if they find out you’re gay you’re just murdered on the spot.”

“No, not here, though. Here they just ban you from donating blood and when bad shit happens people just say ‘oh, most of us aren’t like that, look at our nice Pride Parade and how we legalized same-sex marriage before everyone else, quit whining.’”

Lukas laughed; a low, smoky sound that made Matthias’s palms sweat.

“Isn’t it funny how people think other people are only beholden to the mores of modern times, as if social conditioning of two past decades is negated by a court ruling from two years ago?”

“Long words. I’m drunk.”

“If you were raised to be an asshole, you will probably stay an asshole no matter what the court says. Murderers don’t stop murdering just because someone behind a desk said ‘no, that’s bad.’”

“Do you want me to walk you home?”

Lukas raised a partially shaved eyebrow.

“Can you even walk?”

“I can walk perfectly fine. I can even carry you if I have to.”

“Don’t.”

“The offer stands. I’ll go tell Abel. I’ll be right back.”

Matthias poked his head inside the door to motion to Abel that he was going. Abel shooed him before he made a motion with his closed hand, mouth and tongue crudely imitating a particular intimate act. Matthias then ducked back out to tell Lukas that Abel was going to stay back and he’d be walking him back on his own. Lukas didn’t seem to mind, mentioning something about only being needed to be walked back to the nearest metro station.

“But yeah, fuck conservatives.”

Lukas was biting his painted nails and Matthias had half a mind to grab the hand out of his mouth and hold it. It took a lot of willpower not to.

“Do we fuck the conservatives or are the conservatives fucking us? There is an openly racist party in second place in Danish parliament; I wonder if they’ll make me go back to Norway.”

“Probably not, but my friend is gay, Turkish, and Muslim—

“What, all at once?”

“Kristian Thulesen Dahl’s worst nightmare. Anyway, he’s losing his damn mind right now. I’m concerned about seeing if the People’s Party gains any more traction; a couple of gay Danes I know blame homophobia on immigration and say that being homophobic is a side effect of Islam.”

“Well, that’s nonsense.”

“Right? There was this thing I read a few months back about how the _Danskernes Parti_ was actually handing out hairspray to use as ‘anti-migrant’ spray as a legal weapon. Like out in Haderslev?”

“Fuck, I heard about that.”

“What kills me is that they say 137 people actually _accepted_ the spray.”

Lukas shook his head, absentmindedly pushing his hair up to reveal the shaved part of his head and what remained of an undercut, dyed black and fading into the white-blond roots of Lukas’s natural hair.

“ _Danskernes Parti_ is full of lunatics. They haven’t won a single government seat. They’re Nazis, for fuck’s sake.”

“Also like, I grew up maybe 20 KM away from there. It’s weird to hear about that sort of thing happening with people who you might have gone to elementary school with.”

“You grew up there? I thought you’d lived here your whole life and fuck the subway grates every day.”

Matthias laughed before scratching the back of his neck awkwardly.

“I’ve spent a good chunk of my adult life in Copenhagen. I moved here when I was seventeen.”

“Not the same as being here since birth.”

“Don’t remind me. What brought you here, _Rollo_?”

“My parents were dead, I didn’t want to go back to Norway and I didn’t want to move to my aunt’s house in Iceland. You? Was it for uni?”

“Ah…not quite. I fucked off when my dad found out I wasn’t straight. You know, he grew up back when it was classified as an illness, so….when I tell people my dad kicked me out for it no one believes me,” Matthias confessed.”

“Shit. He kicked you out?”

“I mean…he was about to. I ran away. I legally changed my name, I dropped out of school and started working at a company that sold construction equipment, worked my way up. I said I had a university degree and they never checked.”

“You fucking lied about your _college education_ on your resume?”

“If you’re tall, handsome and come walking in with purpose and rolled-up sleeves, the world is yours.”

“Debatable. So if you tell me your name right now, do you use the legal one or the one you had back in Haderslev?”

“The legal one is Matthias Kohler. The old one was, ah…Simon Densen.”

“Thank God you left, because that’s the worst name I’ve ever heard.”

“Is that a compliment or an insult?”

“It’s whatever you make of it, _Matthias._ ”

They finally reached the train station and all Matthias wanted to do was physically be there when Lukas opened the door to his apartment and was clearly, definitely safe and okay.

Lukas was looking up at Matthias, expression neutral and opal-smooth and contrasting beautifully with every other spiky thing about him. The serenity of his features was disrupted by the violence that had been done to his nose and the crust of blood around his thin nostrils. Maybe it was the height difference, but Matthias started to wonder if Lukas was looking at his mouth and not his eyes. Lukas said two words before getting on the train:

“Hey. Thanks.”

Matthias stood with his hands in his pockets as it left, taking deliberate steps back to the bar and wondering if bad statistics would ever work out in his favor again.

~~

                                              ~~Whatsapp, 03:19

 **Sad Dick Adnan:** Active 10 minutes ago

 **You:** i met a boy. he has fancy hair and thinks xenophobia/islamophobia’s fucking bullshit. im pretty sure he also likes boys. im in love. we’re gonna have 17 adopted, ethnically diverse kids and the whole world can eat it

 **Sad Dick** : No you’re not, whoever it is; do you know this person’s last name? Or their phone number?

 **You** : ur killin me. he’s my type.

 **Sad Dick:** what, four feet tall and emotionally unavailable?

 **You:** ✓ Seen 03:20

 **Sad Dick** : I leave you alone for 2 weeks when I go to Istanbul to visit my grandma and your ass is already set on marrying a garden gnome

 

Matthias snickered to himself somewhat darkly. _Yeah, I also found out that I fathered something like 109 children in your absence._

Garden gnome, eh? Hmm. That wouldn’t exactly be how Matthias would describe Lukas to someone.

**You** : he’s not a garden gnome. he’s actually a cactus.

 **Sad Dick** : And you have also somehow developed standards

 **You:** I am not lubed up enough for you to be riding my ass like this

~~

The second case file that Matthias read was for a woman named Claudia Svensen. The baby seemed to have been born some two years ago.

The address that was listed was a flower shop and Matthias figured that this was one of those situations where she was living above her workplace. He only began to feel like an intruder maybe two seconds after pushing open the door and seeing Claudia herself. She was pretty; chestnut brown hair tied back and framing a simple, oval-shaped face. She had a tall, slender build that reminded Matthias of his few female friends that had taken up ballet.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for a cactus.”

There was a blur of noise behind the register and a little girl came toddling out at speeds Matthias thought were typically beyond the average two year old and more reminiscient of a skateboard going down a steep hill.

“Oh, Magda—“

“It’s okay, ma’am.”

“Can you watch her while I go in the back? Sorry…”

“No problem.”

Claudia disappeared and Matthias was left alone with tiny Magda, puttering about wearing three (three!) tutus and wielding a red lightsaber that was maybe three times her size.

Matthias sat down crosslegged on the floor and when she looked at him he realized she had his eyes. It sent a jolt down to the pit of his stomach.

“Sir?” called Magda’s mother from a back room. “We have no cacti.”

Matthias briefly considered getting a dozen roses and somehow finding out where Lukas lived. Matthias then decided not to do that, since that would be fucking creepy, and also stupid.

“Um…do you have something similar? I just want something that won’t die.”

“I have an aloe vera plant.”

Magda dropped her lightsaber to pat Matthias’s cheeks with sticky, pudgy hands. Matthias was grinning widely at her.

“Yes. That. That will work.”

~~

Matthias didn’t realize there was a grade school around here and realized even less that it was around now that schools would be getting out.

He was even less prepared to see Lukas at this juncture than he had been the last few times; he stood plainly, with an aloe vera plant under his arm and a horrible poker face plastered across his countenance.

“So! Do you come here often?”

Lukas jumped when the familiar Danish slur pierced the air, practically choking on his cigarette.

“Yeah, totally. Just sit around to watch the small boys and try to figure out which one I might date in ten-odd years.”

Matthias hissed at the remark, shoving his hands further in his pockets.

“I’m waiting for my little brother. We live together in Amager.”

“Do you want to die?”

“No. I’m here because I sure as hell will not let him take transit all alone.”

“Reasonable.”

“Where do you live, if you’re so scandalized by Amager?”

“Vesterbro.”

Lukas smirked.

“Which end?”

“ _Irrelevant._ ”

Matthias glanced to the side at the playground and saw yet another face that he recognized: the file that said SCHMIDT, six years old. Kid looked exactly like him. This was going to be the death of him, wasn’t it?

“ _Simon_?”

Matthias’s head jerked up and Lukas’s mouth curled slightly upwards.

“So you still answer to that name.”

“Simon’s still my middle name, I’ll have you know.”

“I feel bad knowing that about you, so I’ll make it even. Ask me a weird, personal question. I’m in a good mood.”

Matthias, who lacked a filter as much as he lacked any sense of dignity, couldn’t help himself:

“What happened to your parents?”

Lukas let out a deep sigh before finishing his cigarette, stamping the butt with the heel of his work boot.

“My mom moved here when my dad walked out. She’d gotten a mastectomy from the first time she’d had breast cancer and he just fucking….left her. She had my brother when I was sixteen. He’s eight now. The cancer came back when he was four. I dropped out of college for a bit to take care of him; we’re getting back into the swing of things now, but…it was rough. We still live in her apartment—“

Lukas stopped himself and Matthias reached out to touch his shoulder.

“Hey, you don’t have to—“

Lukas shook his head.

“Nah, you’re fine, it was fair. Now we know each other’s traumatic backstories.”

“Your dad’s a dick.”

Lukas laughed that earthy laugh again and Matthias felt his body tingle once more.

“Yeah, I know. His ass hasn’t even paid child support once. I’d like to not have to work three jobs with restarting college so I can afford rent and Emil’s school fees. It’s small stuff, but it adds up.”

“Three?”

“How else do you see me around everywhere? I don’t sleep.”

Matthias was about to respond when Lukas whipped around to shout in Norwegian to a small, equally smooth-faced little boy walking next to a Chinese kid. The smooth-faced little boy came running.

“Leon wanted to know if I could come over to his house and play video games?”

“How long are you going to stay?”

“I dunno, till dinner?”

“I have to work then, Emil. I wouldn’t be able to pick you up till way later than that.”

Matthias said a brief farewell before leaving, mind ticking around how he’d somehow met three of the twelve Danish children of his he’d had without having slept with any of them.

Emil was eight. The Schmidt kid was two years younger than him; they’d probably interacted. That somehow blew his mind more than most things he’d encountered, coming third to meeting a child that his eyes and knowing someone who was pregnant with his demon spawn.

Could he really call himself their father? Did he want to, anyway?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN:   
> Unnskyld meg? (Norwegian): Excuse me?  
> Fik en--(Danish): Got a   
> Har du en lys? (Norwegian): Got a light? 
> 
> Kristian Thulesan Dahl: super conservative, anti-Muslim politician in Denmark. Head of the Danish People's Party, an ultraconservative nationalist group. 
> 
> Danskernes Parti: another nationalist group in Denmark, which is openly neo-Nazi. 
> 
> Amager: slightly skeevy part of Copenhagen. 
> 
> Vesterbro: a part of Copenhagen that is, depending on which part you're in, INCREDIBLY suburban or incredibly NOT suburban (it used to be the old red light district but it's been super gentrified), hence Lukas asking him which end he lives in.


	4. Chapter 4

_They’re fucking everywhere,_ he thought to himself as he looked at the case file for a baby born to MARIE PECTOL some seven years ago and held up the newspaper, where a child with his jagged eyebrows and the last name Pectol was petitioning for their right to be recognized as being neither a boy nor a girl and be called by a different name: Quist.

 _The hell kind of first name is Quist?_ he thought immediately. _They’re seven, be nice. I love you, my tiny child, with your strange name and bad eyebrows. Sorry especially about the eyebrows. Those are my fault._

Without thinking about it he bent down and pecked the grainy picture of their face. When he realized he’d just kissed his newspaper he blushed furiously. _Get a damn hold of yourself, they don’t even know who you are._

Imagine if he’d fathered the PM’s children. At this rate, it seemed like he would, in some capacity. All his kids were popping up; it was only a matter of time before he saw a child of his on TV or something.

~~

Matthias clocked in to work to see Sadik sprawled out in his office chair as if he hadn’t just gotten back from two weeks of paid leave.

“I just got 50 reports on my desk and a note saying ‘welcome back to hell, Adnan.’”

“Are they supposed to be written in Danish or in English?”

“ _Both_. When is someone going to request me to write a report in Turkish or Arabic?”

“When people stop throwing fits about our country not being entirely white anymore.”

Sadik shrugged with a wry smile.

“Likely.”

“How was Istanbul?”

“Well, I got stopped going in because I’m a single man with a small bag and I hadn’t printed my return ticket so they thought I was going one-way.”

“What?”

“They thought I was joining Daesh.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. It was fine, I explained it all and they were able to pull up my return ticket, so it wasn’t too much of a problem. Enough to give my _nine_ palpitations.”

“More than when you brought your boyfriend home for Eid?”

“Do you have _any_ idea how much translation work it was to keep Caoimhean from getting his ass kicked? He wasn’t allowed to go into the mosques ‘cuz he’s a Catholic and he kept getting confused as to why no one was drinking if it was a party.”

“Yeah, me and him both.”

Matthias finally slung himself across his office chair and clicked his pen five times before turning back and restarting his conversation with Sadik:

“Has Herakles gotten back yet?”

“No. I got here early.” Sadik leaned forward conspiratorially, the gleam in his eye making Matthias forget that Sadik was at least five years Matthias’s senior.

“I cleared his computer desktop and replaced his background with a screenshot of how it was before.”

Matthias snickered.

“Hey, I have to make coffee, do you want any?”

“I’m not drinking your coffee.”

“Right. I forgot that for Turkish coffee you need seven monks to chant over the beans before you grind them.”

“Fuck off.”

When Matthias had been flipping through the case files, one name that had stuck out just after Väinämöinen; female, four years old.

She was sitting on the copy machine, two blistered scars on the side of her hands.

_Von Bock._

Matthias had initially figured that there were multiple people in Copenhagen with a name like “von Bock”; it wasn’t necessarily a common one, but it certainly wasn’t _uncommon_ either.

“ _God Morgen,”_ said the little girl politely. _“Jeg hedder Elisa._ ”

 _“God Morgen, jeg hedder Matthias._ ”

She clearly got a serious side from her mother, Mia, who was working as an IT specialist for their firm and had a doe-eyed seriousness about her that Matthias admired but never really searched for in other people.

Her face was all Mia’s as well; Matthias could tell that the baby-soft cheeks Elisa still carried were probably going to stay with her the same way Mia’s had.

Matthias stopped to think about how he’d been running into so many people who were either about to have children or who already had them.

Matthias then remembered that he’d lied about his age while getting this job and most of his friends were already in their thirties.

Did he tell Mia? Tell pretty, soft-spoken Mia with her hair in a bun and blue eyes peering over a foggy pair of glasses, that the child she’d carried for nine months was half of him?

No, he decided, giving the little girl a half-hearted wave goodbye as he finished stirring his coffee and walked back to his desk. It wouldn’t be fair.

He sat down at his desk and saw Mia come out of her office to pick her daughter up from her perch on the printer.

“Will you ever behave?”

“I was behaving, mama.”

~~

Matthias was being accosted by Tino Väinämöinen a second time, this time on the actual floor of the weight room while Matthias was walking towards his designated sandbag.

“I heard an interesting thing from a friend, Matthias.”

Tino’s face had grown softer, a small pool of roundness growing at the valley between his hips. It made Matthias’s heart swell and he hated it, hated how much he felt like he should have his hands in their lives when he’d been so ready to put himself aside from everyone who’d chosen him as a biological parent. Would they have picked him even if they’d known him in real life?

“My friend Lukas said you ran off when you found out he had a baby brother.”

“Firstly, you know Lukas?”

“Yes. I know every kid with a history of bad haircuts in Copenhagen.”

“Any reason?”

“I fix the bad haircuts.”

“Secondly, that’s not true.” Matthias’s fist connected with the sandbag, the fake leather slowly losing its shape and molding around the indents of Matthias’s taped fists.

“He and Emil got in an argument and I didn’t want to be a pain in the ass.”

“He was going to ask for your number.”

Matthias slowed down.

“That’s great and all, but he never did and I think there’s no point in talking about the what-if’s.”

“Well that’s a really healthy philosophy, but he said I should give his number to you since he wasn’t able to ask for yours.”

Matthias stopped entirely and Tino smiled before continuing.

“I stuck it into your gym bag. Ask him about Norwegian folklore. He’s writing his master’s thesis on the allegorical import of trolls.”

~~

                                              ~~Whatsapp, 17:04

 **Necronomibong Havemeyer:** Active 2 minutes ago

 **You:** SO I HAVE A DATE.

**Necronomibong is typing…**

**You:** before you ask. I do not know if it’s actually a date but it’s. it’s something, dammit

 **Necronomibong:** Did you get his number by legal means?

 **You:** I mean…yes, a mutual friend tracked me down.

 **Necronomibong:** A mutual friend?

 **You:** yeah, from the gym.

 **Necronomibong:** You mean you’ve made friends beside me and Sadik? What’s happened to you? Who is this person who goes outside of his house without prompting and has multiple other outlets for social interaction?

 **You:** ok for starters, I’m not a hermit. I’m a social person.

 **Necronomibong:** Yeah, but let’s be honest, you didn’t get out much before this whole baby thing happened.

 **Necronomibong:** Honestly, Matti, the day you called me over about the kids I was about to tell you to go to therapy. You showed every major symptom of depression.

 **Necronomibong:** Even with the fact that you’re an extroverted person, it looked like you were committing this roundabout form of self-harm by only limiting your social activity to like…just me outside of work and Sadik while you were at work.

 **Necronomibong:** You’re not responding so I think you might be checking out right now, but

 **Necronomibong:** I’m proud of you for turning your life around, even if they aren’t actually your kids outside of biological footprint.

 

                                              ~~Whatsapp, 17:11

 **KnifeEmoji Bondevik:** Active 30 seconds ago

 **KnifeEmoji:** yeah no it’s not a big deal if you can’t come it’s no problem you know like? Emil has a science project he has to do where he has to observe an animal and it’s my day off and I didn’t want him to have to go all the way across town to the aquarium by himself.

 **You:** what animal

 **KnifeEmoji:** he fucking loves puffins

 **You:** that’s adorable

 **KnifeEmoji:** I don’t question it. Leon might go too, assuming his parents allow him to leave his house with my punk ass.

 **You:** for what it’s worth, I would let my hypothetical children leave with your punk ass.

 **KnifeEmoji:** thanks. that means a lot to me.

 

Matthias took two seconds and revisited Abel’s messages. He needed to change the subject before Abel got a little too much under his skin. At that moment, he was thankful for separate chat windows.

                                              ~~Whatsapp, 17:19

 **You:** it’s not exactly a date, I just found out. He has to go to the aquarium with his little brother and like…invited me along.

 **Necronomibong:** okay

~~

Lukas and Matthias were standing after paying their 170 kroner fee and looking at a sign about feeding the sea otters, starting at 16:30. Leon and Emil had already gone running into the thicket, Leon crowing something about the shark tank.

“What kind of name for a sea otter is Agnes?”

Lukas’s mouth twitched into a grin.

“I don’t know, but I think Mojoe is somehow a funnier one.”

The light from the fish tanks glowed on Lukas’s skin, the blue somehow looking at home on him. His eyes stayed locked on the fish floating up above and in front of them, eyes narrowing slightly as he tried to make out the pattern they were swimming in. _He’s beautiful,_ thought Matthias, quickly quelling the sentiment before it creeped onto his too-readable face.

“If a _jötunn_ walked in here they’d look like a normal human being,” said Matthias, remembering Tino’s advice.

“Except for that part where they have several heads and they’re twenty feet tall. The blue skin thing was only in the Thor movies.”

“Fuck, right.”

“Nice try, though.”

_Find something that you know for a fact and impress him with it._

He looked back at the sign for the sea otters, fading from relevance as they approached the tank of jellyfish.

“Sea otters hold hands when they sleep so that they don’t drift away from each other.”

 _Find something that’s possibly less sappy, you transparent son of a_ —

“Really?”

“Yeah. They also link arms and float in like…a big group sometimes.”

“How do you know that?”

Matthias looked down to Lukas and grinned.

“I did this kind of project growing up too.”

They finally reached the shark tank to see Leon and Emil standing slack-jawed at the sight. Leon leaned over to whisper "soup" into Emil's ear just to laugh at his horrified expression. 

“I have one for you,” said Lukas. “Did you know the best way to get a shark to leave you alone is to punch it in the face?”

“I mean…that’s also true of people.”

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes.”

Matthias saw a pair of hollering, plain-faced twins with his downturned eyes run through the exhibit. _Magnussen. Five years old._

Matthias felt a strong urge to leave the exhibit right then, immediately, before someone figured out how much he looked like them.

“I think that’s why shark attacks like, when they happen, they’re so often resulting in grievous injury. People are too scared to punch a shark in the face.”

“I’d punch a shark in the face.”

Emil ran up, red-faced, asking them both to come look at what he’d just found. The two followed to see a flock of puffins perched peacefully on the rocks.

“They’re _beautiful_ ,” said Emil more to himself than to Matthias or his older brother.

Leon was too busy stealing rocks out of the planters on the boardwalk and dropping them into the water to pay too much attention to the puffins themselves.

Leon and Emil finally set to work, pulling out their notebooks and stopwatches. Leon would say something very seriously in Chinese to Emil and Emil would respond in kind in Icelandic, which the two seemed to find hilarious.

“There’s a showing of _When We Dead Awaken_ downtown. Do you want to go this weekend? Like, you and I? I get a student discount at that particular theater.”

Matthias typically couldn’t stand Ibsen. Matthias now suddenly wanted to know, eat, sleep, breathe everything to do with Ibsen.

“Yes.”

~~

                                              ~~Whatsapp, 22:45

 **Sad Dick Adnan:** Active 2 hours ago

 **You:** remember how I talked about that guy I’m having 17 children with

 **Sad Dick:** yes.

 **You:** im seeing an ibsen play with him this weekend

 **Sad Dick:** what the fuck has HAPPENED to you remember when I showed you some poems by Rumi and lost your shit because he opened one poem with the phrase ‘I am a grape’ 

 **You:** it was fucking hilarious let me live

 **Sad Dick:** Matthias Kohler is willingly going to see an Ibsen play. I’m going to wake up white tomorrow or smth I swear

 **You:** omfg

 **Sad Dick:** my name is Samuel Adamson and I love Kafka and mayonnaise and you saying I eat cabbage is racist. I will sue.

 **You:** STOPPPPP

~~

A large dose of Ibsen later and Matthias had only been kept awake by the absolute bleakness of the plot and Lukas’s palpable excitement at the spectacle itself.

When they’d gotten out, Matthias had expressed surprise at how much Lukas liked it. It wasn’t even the most good of his plays, argued Matthias, who had pushed through A Doll’s House in high school like everyone else.

“It’s not supposed to be good. It’s like life. Ibsen was dying when he wrote that play. He knew it was to be his last, he _wanted_ it to be his last.”

“So we’re all going to die in an avalanche after cheating on our spouses?”

“ _No_ , but if we keep valuing the meaning of the physical world over emotional attachments then we’ll never live properly.”

“Still a little bleak.”

“Well, yeah, but not everything should end happily.”

“I genuinely can’t think of a play from our countries that has a happy ending.”

“Art needs gravitas. It shouldn’t all be like _Klown_.”

“Okay, _nothing_ should be like _Klown_ , holy fuck—“

Lukas let out a sigh of relief before shuffling through his fancy jacket (that he definitely didn’t want to look fancy) for his cigarettes.

“Don’t smoke too much. It doesn’t look good after 25.”

“What, 25 cigarettes?”

“No, 25 years old. Your teeth start to get all gross and your skin goes yellow.”

“You speak from experience?” Lukas squinted. “How old are you, anyway?”

“Twenty-six. You’re twenty-four, right?”

Lukas stuck the cigarette defiantly between his thin lips.

“I’m a college student, you try not smoking on a college campus.”

“Just taper it off over a long period.”

“How long?”

“I’ve been trying for a long time. I’m not a tapering kind of guy, but it works for most people. I’m all or nothing, you know?”

Lukas snorted before flicking open his lighter and hunching over the flame.

“I either eat nothing or five sandwiches. Have no dads or seven dads.”

“I had like seven moms and no dad, so it’s not that outrageous.”

“Seven moms?”

“Once my mom and I moved here I was raised by a flock of lesbians.”

Matthias burst out laughing at the phrasing.

“No, seriously. My mom was bisexual but none of her friends were straight or men. They still help out a lot with Emil and everything…they drove me and Emil to school and things, and took her to the hospital when it…when it got close to the end.”

“Would your flock of gay moms say anything about you smoking?”

“I’m twenty-four, I’m my own adult, and I only do it when I’m stressed.”

“You’re stressed?”

“Of course I am.”

They finally reached the Bondevik apartment and it was time for them to say goodbye.

“So…”

“ _So._ ”

“This was cool.”

“It was.”

“I’ll, uh…”

When Lukas pulled Matthias down by his lapels to kiss him, Matthias did not resist at all. Lukas tasted like cigarettes and smelled like how Matthias imagined cut rocks did.

It was at that exact moment that Emil decided to open the door and hollered something in Icelandic, causing Lukas to freeze up and Matthias to turn and press his forehead into the wall and desperately try to not start laughing.

“I’ll see you around?”

“Yes,” said Lukas hastily, grabbing Emil by his waist and throwing him over his shoulder while Emil protested. “I’ll text you.”

~~

For the first time in actual years, Matthias came home singing. Maybe it was one of those sappy songs he remembered that came from his mother, but it didn’t matter. Her leaving had been the prequel to his escape, he reasoned, and instead of mourning her departure he should celebrate her success…their success.

While his father had threatened intervention, he had run away, made his life his own, and was coming home from a date with another man. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered!

He’d begun the sperm donation to help pay his father’s rent; he’d continued at a separate location to pay his own some few months later. It was all worth it. Everything was worth it.

He looked over at the envelope full of names that he hadn’t touched in a long time. How many could there possibly be left? He’d been running into his kids all around town for the past few months. There couldn’t possibly be many more; he’d found what, seven of the twelve total kids? Most of whom without looking?

He grabbed the papers and started flipping through, whistling as he did so. The whistle stalled in his throat as he fell upon the very last case file.

He dropped the case file and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The smile on his face began to die. He needed a beer.

The case file was illuminated by the light of the fridge opening, shining on the name in bold black print listed under the date of birth: eight and a half-odd years ago.

**BONDEVIK.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: 
> 
> Nine (Turkish): Nana, grandma, meemaw 
> 
> God morgen, jeg hedder (Danish): Hello, my name is 
> 
> Mojoe and Agnes: Two famous sea otters from the Copenhagen Aquarium. They are real. 
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you for reading! Please comment, kudos, w/e. My tumblr url is gayhemingway and I love getting messages there! thanks so much beans.


	5. Chapter 5

He’d come home from work to find the door open and a note attached to the door in big, childish print (and lime green gel pen, Matthias noted):

“MY NAME IS AMANDINE AHMED. I AM TEN YEARS OLD. I ASKED MY MAMA WHO MY DAD WAS AND SHE EXPLAINED THAT SHE DID NOT KNOW WHO YOU WERE, SO I DECIDED TO FIND YOU. I AM GOOD AT COMPUTERS.

_Like hell you are._

SO I FOUND YOUR ADDRESS, I PICKED THE LOCK AND WALKED AROUND. THIS PLACE SMELLS LIKE BEER AND DUST. I DO NOT WANT TO MEET YOU ANYMORE.

GOODBYE. HAVE A GOOD LIFE.

This was getting far out of hand, Matthias thought before folding up the note and putting it in his back pocket.

She probably got the intelligence quotient from her mother, he mused as his phone began to buzz.

 **Sad Dick Adnan:** MATTHIAS YOU NEED TO WATCH THIS RIGHT NOW IMMEDIATELY

He clicked the YouTube link of a boy who was definitely Danish. It was one of his children again. When was he going to meet a child he wasn’t the father of? Would he ever see those again? He knew that cue ball curve of a cheek better than anyone; it was the same round, too-young face you found in his baby photos, stashed in corners of Matthias’s apartment to remind him that he’d lived and thrived before the age of nineteen.

It was your typical surrealist baby video. It was made more surreal to him by looking at a child who had his exact face. He looked down at the hits to see that it was already at some two million.

                                                                                                             ~~Whatsapp, 18:22

 **Sad Dick:** kid looks like he could be yours omg

 **You:** lol could you imagine?

 **Sad Dick:** seriously any chance you hooked up with a girl in the past few years

 **You:** haha, not likely

 **Sad Dick:** you white people all look alike though so it’s probably a fluke

 **You:** FUCK

 **Sad Dick:** Seriously though I went to a family reunion of Caoimhean’s and I am not joking, his brothers are like a Xerox. I think God only put out like 2 diff sewing patterns for white people. there’s like. Freckles and Not Freckles. That’s it.

 **You:** sewing patterns?

 **You:** you mean models?

 **Sad Dick:** Yes. Those.

 **You:** sadik what the fuck

 **Sad Dick:** Ve yine de hiç Türkçe konuşmuyorsun

 **Sad Dick:** Gerizekalı.

 **You:** Dø dit fede pikfjæs

 **Sad Dick:** Benim hakkımda ne sikime söylemiştin pislik herif? Donanma Mühürlerindeki sınıfımdan mezun oldum ve El Kaide hakkında sayısız gizli baskında bulunmuştum ve 300'den fazla onaylı öldürme olayım var. Goril savaşı konusunda eğitim aldım ve ABD silahlı kuvvetlerinin tamamında en üst keskin nişancı olduğumu söyledim. Sen benim için hiçbir şey değil, sadece başka bir hedef. Bu dünyada daha önce hiç görülmemiş hassasiyetle seni sileceğim, lanet kelimeleri işaretleyin. İnternette boktan şeyleri söyleyerek kurtulabileceğini mi düşünüyorsun? Bir daha düşünün canım. Konuştuğum gibi, ABD genelindeki gizli casus ağımla bağlantı kuruyorum ve şu anda IP adresinize ulaşıyorsunuz, böylece fırtına, kurtçuk için daha iyi hazırlanacaksınız. Hayatını dediğin acınası küçük şeyi ortadan kaldıran fırtına. Sen öldün evlat. İstediğim yerde, her yerde olabilirim ve seni yedi yüz yoldan öldürebilirim, ve bu sadece çıplak ellerimle. Sadece silahsız mücadele konusunda kapsamlı eğitim almadım, aynı zamanda Birleşik Devletler Deniz Piyadelerinin tüm cephanelerine erişebilirim ve kıtanın yüzünden mutsuz kıçını silmek için onu tamamen kullanacağım, seni küçük pislik. Küçük "zeki" yorumunuzun sizi aşağılamak üzereyken ne kadar kutsal olmayan cezasının olduğunu bilseydin, belki lanet dilini tutmuş olurdun. Ama yapamadın, yapmadın, şimdi de parayı ödüyorsun, lanet olası salak. Seni dört bir yanımdan bok ederim ve boğacaksın. Sen ölüsün, evlat.

 **You:** …exactly how long have you been sitting on that translation

 **Sad Dick:** so long.

~~

Matthias was definitely avoiding looking at the file with Emil’s information in it when his phone buzzed again. He was awfully popular, wasn’t he? He turned his phone over to see that Abel was asking him something about how he hadn’t heard from him in awhile, was he okay?

_No._

He hadn’t been able to talk to Lukas since finding out and he didn’t know if he even should.

Was he to close it off entirely, set the dossier on fire and never speak of it again, or would he sit down with Emil and tell him who he was?

He suddenly recalled the bar before running into Lukas the third time. What was it that Abel had said?

_“Is your sense of self is worth more than the people who are hurt by it?”_

                                                                                                                       ~~Whatsapp, 20:58

 **KnifeEmoji Bondevik:** Active 6h ago

 **You:** hey? can we talk?

 **You:** lukas I’m really sorry that I just dropped the ball like that do you want to come meet up at mine for a bit

 **You:** seriously.

**KnifeEmoji is typing…**

**KnifeEmoji:** I want to talk to you too. Give me your address again, I lost it.

~~

There was an empty email in Matthias’s draft folder addressed to the email that the official from Cryos had provided. He was crafting the subject header with a businesslike precision when the familiar knock on the door came.

Lukas’s forehead was pressed against the door when Matthias opened the door, causing Lukas to stumble for maybe a second and a half. Lukas recovered quickly to meet Matthias’s eyes. Matthias only said one word as Lukas walked into his apartment.

“Hej.”

Lukas moved with an unsophisticated grace that left Matthias breathless. The force behind the slap to the face that he received also was a factor.

“Two _fucking_ weeks, you couldn’t be bothered to talk to me? And then you suddenly text me, at night, asking to show up at your place? Who the fuck do you think I am, Matthias?”

“Lukas, I’m sorry—“ _I didn’t want to impose._

“Look, is it because I…why? Why did you just fucking stop like that?”

“It has nothing to do with you. Lukas…” Matthias couldn’t help his hands making their way to Lukas’s cheeks, cupping his face. He still hesitated to kiss him, as much as he wanted to. “Lukas, you’re perfect, I promise, it’s not—“

He could feel Lukas slackening in his grip.

“It was my fault. It was all my fault. I promise. I was in a weird space for the past two weeks, I had some things to think about.”

“I repeat, who the hell do you think I am?”

That baby face went very serious, jagged eyebrows pushing together over those big blue eyes that Lukas hated to admit he got lost in.

“I don’t know, maybe my boyfriend if you still want to be?”

~~

To: (redacted)

From: [m.kohler@ccenterprises.org](mailto:m.kohler@ccenterprises.org)

Subject: Anonymity Clause

Hello,

I wanted to address my anonymity within your servers and in regards to my biological offspring via the sperm donation program.

The official who came to visit me said that the question is asked every ten years regarding the maintenance of anonymity, correct?

If that is the case, I want to defer my decision about that sort of thing for another ten years. I need more time to wrap my head around the level of emotional strain it might be to have contact with that many people. There is also the fact that my children will be older at that point.

I have not released any information regarding my posterity to people who pertain to the subject; all subjects do not know I am their father and it will stay that way for at least the next ten years.

Thank you for your time. I hope to speak through this in-depth with you forthwith.

Best,

Matthias Kohler

~~

Matthias finally pressed his thumb against the _Send_ button on his screen and exhaled. One week and he’d left that email draft sitting there that whole time? He was the damn worst.

This seemed like the best solution. There was no way to know if Emil was going to be in his life in the next year, let alone the next decade. By then he would be eighteen and perfectly capable of asking on his own. But it didn’t seem right for Matthias to tell him now, especially when he didn’t seem to concerned about the subject in the first place.

Lukas’s arms wrapped around his torso.

“ _Hva gjør du?”_

Matthias rolled back over to pull his boyfriend against his chest.

“ _Intet, kærlighed._ ”

~~                                             

                                                                                                                  ~~Whatsapp, 05:12

 **The World’s Smallest Man** **Väinämöinen:** Active Now

 **The World’s Smallest Man** **:** Ber and I are doing something for Midsummer in a few weeks; he has a little place out on the shore. Do you and Lukas want to come?

 **You:** let me ask him. What shore tho?

 **The World’s Smallest Man** **:** A bit outside of Malmö I think?

 **You:** UM.

 **The World’s Smallest Man** **:** Right?

 **You:** how long has his family been there

 **The World’s Smallest Man** **:** what do you mean

 **You:** is our friend berwald a fucking Viking

 **The World’s Smallest Man** **:** I mean no one ever said he wasn’t

 **You:** THIS IS TRUE **You:** so if Lukas comes, can he bring Emil?

 **The World’s Smallest Man:** Matthias I’m like six months pregnant with a stranger’s child idk if Ber needs more strange children running around 

 **You:** pls just ask it’s important

 **The World’s Smallest Man:** ok

 **You:** how’s the Expecting Yoga course going

 **The World’s Smallest Man:** fuck you

~~

On June 23, Scandinavians all get together on the coasts to set shit on fire. It has been the way of things since as long as the identity has existed. Matthias fucking loves it. He and Lukas sit looking at the bonfire glowing against the water and at Emil running down the beach, his jeans rolled up over his knobbed knees.

“Do you think he’s got enough?” asked Lukas, leaning on Matthias’s shoulder. “He’s an orphan but I think he has more parents than most kids do.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“I wonder what I’m gonna do when he asks who his dad was. I have no clue; I always assumed it was my dad, but…when you do the math it wouldn’t make sense. And then I think, like…does it matter?”

“Is he happy with you and your flock of lesbians?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you happy with him and the flock of lesbians?”

Lukas curled into the arm wrapped around his shoulders. “Yes, but I’m also happy with you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR READING! 
> 
> Translation Notes: 
> 
> Ve yine de hiç Türkçe konuşmuyorsun (Turkish): And yet you speak no Turkish.   
> Gerizekalı (Turkish): Dipshit 
> 
> Dø dit fede pikfjæs (Danish): Suck a fat cockhead   
> The block of Turkish that follows the Danish: the Navy Seal copypasta in Turkish. 
> 
> Hva gjør du? (Norwegian): What are you doing?
> 
> Intet, kærlighed (Danish) Nothing, my love


End file.
